The After-Effects Of Anger Management

Ask anyone to keep count of the number of times they get angry in one day and my guess is the figure would head towards double digits pretty quickly. If you're a woman with a stressful full-time job, three children under six, a diabetic Airedale terrier, a pregnant nanny, a partner who also works full-time and a staff of 35 other women to manage then, believe me, that number easily surpasses double digits by lunchtime. But given our time-poor (and now cash-poor) "have-it-all" lifestyle, isn't a simmering level of female fury understandable? To be expected even? I thought so, until my colleagues suggested I take an anger management course.

Let me explain. I wanted to commission a debate on how cross women seem to be today - from the media-hyped explosion of aggressive girl gangs to the observation that the women taking part in the BBC's Apprentice seemed to get so much angrier than the male contestants. "Let's get someone to test anger-management solutions," I said. Ten minutes later my features editor popped her head round my office door and suggested I was the perfect candidate.

The good news? My team weren't too scared to suggest anger management to me in person; I mean I'm not Tony Soprano for goodness sake. The bad news? When quizzed, a friend confirms I do spend a ludicrous amount of time getting angry about everything and nothing, barely keeping a lid on the "mean reds" as Holly Golightly called them in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

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